1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer-readable storage medium having an information processing program stored therein, a handheld terminal apparatus, a system, an information processing method, and a communication system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a computer-readable storage medium having an information processing program stored therein, a handheld terminal apparatus, a system, an information processing method, and a communication system, for receiving information from another information processing apparatus by short-range wireless communication and for performing predetermined processes by using the received information.
2. Description of the Background Art
There are widely-known conventional systems in which handheld terminal apparatuses of the same type perform short-range wireless communication therebetween to transmit/receive information to/from each other. For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-136737 discloses that handheld game apparatuses of the same type transmit/receive information to/from each other by short-range wireless communication and each handheld game apparatus executes an application such as a video game by using the information that has been obtained from another handheld game apparatus by the short-range wireless communication.
In such a conventional system described above, a handheld terminal apparatus is unable to obtain information by short-range wireless communication if no other communication apparatuses (no other handheld terminal apparatuses) to be a communication counterpart of the handheld terminal apparatus are present within a particular distance range from the handheld terminal apparatus, which distance range allows the short-range wireless communication to be performed (hereinafter, a “communicable range”). For example, in a situation where the handheld terminal apparatus is not widely used, or in an area of low population density such as a depopulated area, it is likely that the number of other handheld terminal apparatuses to be a communication counterpart of the handheld terminal apparatus is small within the communicable range of the short-range wireless communication.
In this case, the handheld terminal apparatus is unable to execute applications by using information that is obtained from other handheld terminal apparatuses. Thus, a wide variety of processes cannot be performed.